Sūrah 93 · Āyāt 6–8

Sūrat al-Ḍuḥā 93:6–8 — Three questions, three graces

Three rhetorical questions recount God's past care: "Did He not find you an orphan, and shelter you? And find you astray, and guide you? And find you needy, and enrich you?" Across the sources each clause carries a plain (ẓāhir) reading and a deeper (bāṭin) one.

"An orphan, and sheltered you." Majmaʿ al-Bayān, al-Tibyān, and al-Mīzān all give the literal biography: the Prophet's father died before his birth, his mother when he was two, his guardian-grandfather when he was eight, after which Abū Ṭālib raised him. Ṭabarsī adds al-Ṣādiq's reason for this orphaning — "so that no created being would have a claim over him." All three then record the second reading: yatīm as the peerless one, like the durra yatīma ("unique pearl"); on this reading "He found you without equal and sheltered mankind to you." This bāṭin sense is exactly what al-Qummī and al-Burhān transmit from the Imāms — "He sheltered people to you" (Zurāra ← al-Bāqir/al-Ṣādiq), and explicitly in al-Riḍā's dialogue with al-Maʾmūn (al-Burhān): "Did He not find you unique, so He sheltered people to you?"

"Astray, and guided you." This is the passage's theological crux, and the sources are united in refusing any sense of misguidance. Ṭabarsī marshals seven views, Ṭūsī five; their common core is that ḍalāl here means unawareness of prophethood and the sacred law before the mission, or being unrecognized among one's people — "going-away from knowledge," not from faith. Ṭūsī adds the grammatical reading of ḍāll as madlūl (passive, "one made lost," like māʾ dāfiq = madfūq). al-Mīzān gives the most metaphysical formulation — the Prophet's "soul in itself was without guidance, though divine guidance was inseparable from it from the moment it came to be" — citing 42:52, Moses at 26:20, and 12:3; (this subtle phrasing is flagged for human review.) The dominant Imāmī gloss (al-Qummī, al-Burhān, al-Riḍā) settles the matter practically: "He found you unrecognized among a people who did not know your merit, so He guided them to you." (A web cross-check confirms the mainstream reading: pre-prophetic unawareness, not deviation; the Prophet remained on the fiṭra*.)*

"Needy, and enriched you." Ṭabarsī, Ṭūsī, and al-Mīzān give the literal sense — poverty relieved "through the wealth of Khadīja and the spoils" — while Ṭabarsī also records Muqātil/al-Farrāʾ's reading of ghinā as contentment ("he was made content with his provision — that is the reality of richness"), and al-Mīzān notes the view that the enrichment was "the answering of his supplication." Once more al-Qummī, al-Burhān, and al-Riḍā lift it to the bāṭin: "you supported peoples with knowledge, so He enriched them through you," and "[enriched you] through revelation, so that you ask about nothing." al-Burhān's long Ibn ʿAbbās narration heightens this into miracle — stone turned to gold, food and water where there were none, angelic aid against enemies. Ṭabarsī and Ṭūsī close the passage by answering an objection — how can God "remind" of favor (minna)? — with the principle that reminding is base only when meant to belittle; here it is meant to evoke gratitude and invite more, and so is itself a further grace.